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For Readers

We provide best selling audio and print books you can checkout and download to a wide range of devices.

Kids and Teens can find best selling audio and print books in two new collections: the TEENScollection and the KIDScollection. Try them, and don't forget that you can always go to the main collection for more.

Zinio Digital Newstand Platform offers you access to full digital copies of some of your favorite magazines. You can download and view these titles on your computer or mobile device. Learn more about using Zinio

Hoopla is a free audio and video streaming service available to all Upper Arlington Public Library cardholders. Through Hoopla you have access to thousands of titles in e-book, video, music, audiobook and comic book formats for streaming or temporary download. Check our support page, or download a copy of our Hoopla Instructions sheet.

Hoopla is a free audio and video streaming service available to all Upper Arlington Public Library cardholders. Through Hoopla patrons now have access to thousands of titles in e-book, video, music, audiobook and comic book formats for streaming or temporary download. Content can be enjoyed on smartphones, tablets or computers. Check our support page, or download a copy of our Hoopla Instructions sheet.

New Releases

The Adult Readers' Blog

We all do it to varying degrees. Whether we’re walking past a book display or browsing, we reach for books to which we’re drawn. Book covers are billboards designed to lure in potential readers, offering us a glimpse into the story inside. What specifically is it about a book’s cover though that captures our attention? Is it the graphic? In addition to our brains processing images faster than words, images make us feel something. Is it the author? Well-known authors typically have their names prominently displayed on their covers, making it easy for name recognition to guide a reader’s hand. Is it the title? Since our brains don’t comprehend words at a glance, books with short, pithy titles stand a better chance of breaking through to us. Or, is it a rank-ordered combination of these? It’s different for each of us and can change with mood. Below are some recent books with a variety of cover designs.

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Adult Recommendations

Britt-Marie Was Here, by Fredrik Backman

Meet Britt-Marie, a Scandinavian housewife whose tolerance of her husband’s philandering has finally ended. In need of a job and a place to live, she badgers a bewildered employment office worker into finding her work as the caretaker of a soon-to-be-closed recreation center in tiny, economically depressed Borg. Her neighbors include an enterprising teen whose business ventures are never completely legal; a vision-impaired ex-soccer star who “accidentally” hits people she doesn’t like with her cane; a shy policeman with a crush; a rat that likes Snickers; and a youth soccer team in desperate need of a coach. As Britt-Marie is drawn into their passions, dreams, and schemes, she begins to consider what she wants out of her own life, and both she and the town of Borg find something they thought they’d lost forever: hope.

The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu: And Their Race to Save the World’s Most Precious Manuscripts by Joshua Hammer

In the sub-Saharan country of Mali, Abdel Kader Haidara was 17 years old when his father died and he became the custodian of the family’s library—a collection of five thousand manuscripts in Timbuktu and about eight times that many in their ancestral home in Bamba. Not long after, the director of the Ahmed Baba Institute of Higher Learning and Islamic Research in Timbuktu hired him to collect and preserve manuscripts.

Over the years, Haidara located thousands of manuscripts from as early as the 11th century on diverse topics including Islamic jurisprudence, Korans, theological treatises, conflict resolution, contemporary politics, geography, poetry, and astrology. He struggled to save these priceless manuscripts from the devastating effects of mold, termites, and dust because they had been hidden in holes in the ground, caves, secret closets, and storage rooms. Then Al Qaeda’s presence in the area changed everything. It became painfully clear they would need to save as many of the 377,000 manuscripts under his purview from Al Qaeda’s destruction of everything it considered to be sinful.

Readers will be swept into this gripping recounting of a frantic race by ordinary people against time and jihadists.

Glory over Everything: Beyond The Kitchen House by Kathleen Grissom

In this follow up to The KItchen House, Jamie Pyke, son of a white father and a slave mother, is currently living in Philadelphia as a free white business owner since fleeing from his life on a southern plantation.

A good friend’s son who is Jamie’s house servant Pan, has disappeared and possibly been sold into slavery from the Philadelphia docks. Jamie sets off on a journey to find Pan, which ultimately leads him back to his past and too close to the plantation life he fled with slave hunters on his trail.

The story is told via multiple narrators and is a gripping, fast-paced read. Focusing on race, slavery, and the underground railroad, The Glory Over Everything attests to family ties and upbringing as strong influences. Great read!

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Recommended E-Books

Paris in 1918 is a city wracked with grief and shadowed with fear. For Opaline Duplessi, though, it is a refuge from her mother’s dark legacy of magic and her own guilty conscience. Working as a jeweler in the heart of Paris, she meets few people who are unaffected by the war, from her employer’s wounded son to the grieving mothers who seek her out for a last chance at closure. For these mothers, Opaline will use her gifts in lithomancy—the magic of gemstones—to communicate one last message from their sons. Then Opaline meets a ghost who won’t disappear after communicating his last message—a ghost with an uncanny connection to Opaline herself.

As Opaline searches for the man behind the spirit, she is drawn into a conspiracy of White Russians in contact with the exiled Dowager Empress of Russia. But there is a traitor among the conspirators—and if Opaline wants to avoid becoming a ghost herself, she will have to call upon her deepest reserves of strength and her most powerful magics, finally embracing the deadly legacy of La Lune.

Reader Zone

How About A Great Read?

We offer lots of ways to connect our readers with just the right books.

Our collections in this section make it easy for readers to not only identify books that fit their reading interest, but to also download titles at no charge to a media of their choice. So in addition to finding great books, you can read or listen to them whenever you choose.

The resources below will help you find bestseller lists, book discussion guides, reviews, and literary criticisms. You can also download eBooks and eAudiobooks, chat with a librarian for book recommendations, or join an online book club!

Playaway is the newest format of audiobook. It combines an entire book and player in one small unit, which weighs only 2 oz. and fits in your pocket. To view our selection of Playaway titles, go to our catalog, browse by Call Number, type “Play” and hit the Search button orclick here.